The overall objectives of this study are: 1) to attempt to understand the role of alcoholic behavior within the family setting and to define specific elements of family life which may contribute to the inception and maintenance of drinking patterns. This is being carried out through obtaining descriptive and analytic accounts of the structure and dynamics of "normal" patterns of living in families where the wife/mother is the identified problem drinker. These accounts result from naturalistic observation in the households and the interviewing of all family members. 2) to contribute new models of intervention through exploring ways that results of this research can be fed back to therapists for a more educated, broader-based knowledge of individual family dynamics and generic problematic behavior characteristics of alcoholic families.